mini article
i received a really nice private message from a random user on pocketfives.com this morning regarding a response i had written to a thread in the poker discussion forum. the original poster was asking what people do to get out of downswings and since i’m currently in my biggest one ever, i decided to tell him what i’ve been doing. here’s a link to the thread on pocketfives followed by a cut and paste of my response:
http://www.pocketfives.com/poker-forums/7/how-do-u-get-out-of-your-downswing-4878610?pageindex=2
i’m a winning sng player currently in the biggest downswing i’ve ever experienced so i’ll tell you what i’ve been doing.
1. sharkscope other winning players that you see in your games and compare their downswings to the downswing you’re currently in. choose players that you respect and identify as some of the best in your games. if they’ve played a lot of volume, they’ve most likely experienced a downswing much like the one you’re currently in. seeing this will give you confidence that you’re not the first or only one to go through something like this at your level.
2. play fewer tables and concentrate on what you’re doing. playing fewer tables will also reduce the number of bad beats you have to endure per hour and you won’t get too tilted as if you were speed busting while 12 tabling.
3. write down hands you are unsure about during your sessions so you can look at them later. sometimes i’ll have a blank notepad document open so that i can quickly copy and paste hand histories i want to look at later.
4. run hands that you think you may have misplayed in an icm calculator. if you are making bad pushes/calls/folds in sngs, icm will let you know.
5. read some sng articles that are relevant to the games you play. jennifear has written some great ones that can be found on this very site. a google search would probably turn up some other goods ones. you may find something in these that you used to implement in your game and have since completely forgotten about. you may learn something new.
6. post hand histories here and get advice.
7. respond to others that post hand histories in this forum. sometimes the best way to learn is by teaching so get in there and give your 2 cents.
8. look into some coaching if you can afford it.
9. take a break. i donk called a shover who had me covered on the bubble with 68s when there was a player sitting out with 200 chips at 300/600/50. all i needed to do was fold to make money, but i didn’t because the only thing that was going to make me feel better about all my previous bad beats was getting a nasty suckout there. i quickly realized that i just needed some time off because of how irrational my thinking had become. i wished i had taken some time off before i reached this point.
like i said, these are the things that i have found to be most helpful. hopefully there is something in there that works for you.
best of luck.
i didn’t realize it at the time, but i wrote the guy a mini article there. i may or may not edit and revise this and turn it into a legit article. either way, it was pretty cool that some random person found it helpful enough to write me a private message of appreciation.
